Fineos strikes major deal with US health insurer Aetna

3 Mar 2004

LAS VEGAS – Siliconrepublic.com can exclusively reveal that Irish financial services software company Fineos has won a major deal for its Fineos Insure product which is based on its relationship with major US health insurer Aetna.

The software will be used by Aetna to streamline its disability claims processing. The total deal for software, services and hardware is believed to be worth between US$8-10m. Fineos Insure is based around the company’s Front Office technology and Aetna hopes to reduce the cost of claims through having a deeper relationship with disability claimants.

Fineos is one of the approximately 200 companies that have signed up for IBM’s ISV Advantage programme which sees IBM and application developers combining their sales and marketing efforts. Fineos will receive revenues for providing its software and will split the proceeds of providing the consulting and support services associated with the deal with IBM. IBM is also providing its WebSphere middleware, its MQ messaging platform and all the necessary hardware.

A number of Fineos executives are currently in Las Vegas attending PartnerWorld, IBM’s annual event for its business partners.

On the second day of the event IBM announced a sweeping re-organisation of how it interacts and sells with independent software vendors (ISVs) as well as new programmes for business partners targeting the SME marketplace.

The SME initiatives are designed to drive sales of its Express portfolio of products which are designed and priced specifically for SMEs. The Integrated Runtime programme allows independent software vendors (ISVs) to integrate Express products such as WebSphere and DB2 into their own software applications.

The Migration Station initiative facilitates ISVs developing for the Microsoft platform to move to IBM technologies based on open standards. Announcing Migration Station Marc Lautenbach, IBM’s General Manager for Small to Medium Business, cited recent research from analysts Yankee Group which found that 43pc of SMEs are concerned about their over reliance on Microsoft technology.

IBM is spending US$500m on Solutions Builder Express, the amalgamation of sales supports it is providing to business partners who are going after the SME market.

Big Blue is investing US$1bn in programmes for ISVs and is now organising them on a sectoral basis. The first six PartnerWorld Industry networks will cover telecommunications, banking, financial markets, retail, healthcare and life sciences.

A number of IBM’s other Irish business partners are attending the event including Morse, Sharptext, Accenture, Aepona and Bearing Point.

Aepona’s main business is selling its gateway based on Parlay-technology to telcos to enable them to roll out next generation applications. Its primary reason for being at PartnerWorld is because of its relationship with US telco Sprint. As part of its strategy to become more embedded with customers Sprint is working with IBM to identify companies who have applications that can benefit from being mobile enabled.